Small business owner overwhelm?

Transcription:

Okay. Good morning. It’s Tuesday at 10:00, and I’m doing a live today all by myself. What I want to talk about today is overwhelm and small business owners specifically getting overwhelmed in their business. Hey, Espy. Yeah. It’s been a really, really interesting week.

What I’m going to talk about today is overwhelm for the small business owner. As a small business owner, quite often, we take on … We wear so many different hats in our business, including the marketing role. It’s really, really easy to get overwhelmed at times. That’s the kind of week that I had. I want to tell you a bit about that week.

Last week, a couple of things happened. We’ve got a lot of … A couple of projects, video production projects, that we’re getting out. Also, Angela, she had to go to work down in Barbados. She was doing some videos with Amanda down in Barbados, so I lost my team player and my partner. I was holding down the fort here. We also were launching our online training program and our workshop series. We had closed the door on that, so we were doing all the last minute marketing emails for that. It was a pretty crazy week. Even so much so that this morning when I got up, I sat down at my desk and was about to start my day, and then I realized I was supposed to be doing a live video today. So I was not prepared for it at all. I was ready just to bail and just not do it and then ask for forgiveness, even though I’m the one that teaches consistency is really important, being very consistent with your video marketing and doing it all the time.

I decided, you know what? I am going to do it. I’m going to do it on something that I’m struggling with in my business right now is just being overwhelmed in so many different areas. What happens, as most of you know, as a small business owner is that we have a hard time balancing our marketing with serving our clients. I was really in serving the client mode. It was about getting the website up and running and getting the workshop put together and planned and booking the venue and doing all that stuff. My marketing, my video marketing just wasn’t a priority.

It’s real important that we maintain a balance of that. So here I am today. All I did this morning, even though I only had about 10 or 15 minutes to prepare, I did make some notes, and that’s what I wanted to share with you today. I already talked about the one. My first tip would be we really need to find a balance as small business owners between our marketing and the production of our business or servicing our clients.

What happens is as small business owners is you get into a real yo-yo effect, where you do a lot of great marketing, you’re doing a lot of marketing videos and you’re doing other marketing and networking, and you’re spending a lot of time doing that, and so then you get a lot of clients. Then you’ve got to service those clients. So you’re serving a lot of clients, and now you don’t have time to do marketing. Your focus is just on serving your clients. And then, finally, your clients will dwindle out because you’ve serviced them. You’ve delivered the product to them. Now you don’t have any business. So now that will affect your cash flow.

So now there’s not like cash flow coming in, so then you’re going to jump back into marketing and focus really, really hard on marketing. You put a lot of time into marketing right now, because you don’t have a lot clients you need to serve. So you spend all that time doing marketing, and now you’re not servicing any clients that you do have. Then eventually what’s going to happen is that you will get more clients. What happens is it’s just a constant up and down, because it’s like lots of marketing. Get clients in the business, and then service those clients. And then those clients are no longer doing business, because you’ve fulfilled your agreement with them. Then you go back to marketing. It’s just a constant push and pull.

What’s really important is trying to find a balance with that. Even when you’re overwhelmed with servicing the clients that you do have, you still need to be marketing so that stuff’s still being put out there. I’m talking more specifically about video, but even like going out and doing networking events. If you’re doing blog posts, doing that. Being engaged on social media. You still need to find time to do that marketing just to maintain that balance so you don’t get into this seesaw back and forth.

The other thing I had written down is you just need to prioritize it. It doesn’t matter how busy you are. You really need to prioritize your marketing. I think especially your video marketing. The thing that works best is in … I talked about this already, but consistency. Being really consistent with your video marketing, so making sure it’s in your schedule. Tuesday, 10:00 a.m., I’m doing my Facebook Live. That really helps, actually getting it in the schedule. If you’re doing pre-recorded videos that releasing them at the same time. We’ve talked a bit about block shooting before, where you can record several videos and then … Especially if you know when you’re going to be really, really busy servicing your clients. You’re going to be really, really busy, say a busy time of year, shoot six videos in a row, and then automate that so they automatically go out. That would be a really effective way to use your video marketing.

The other thing is to remember that your video marketing is … It’s an investment of your time. It’s not an expense. The time that you put into your video marketing, it will eventually … It takes some time, but eventually, it will give returns to you and your business. You never want to stop investing in that way.

Then lastly, and I talk about this a lot, too, in our seminars. Remember that perfection is not required. The first thing I thought of was, “Okay. I’m just going to do it. I’m just going to go live.” I didn’t wear a dress shirt today. I really, really wasn’t ready to do a video. I didn’t spend a lot of time. I didn’t even do my announcement saying, “I’m going live.” There’s a lot of things that I didn’t do right today, but the thing about video marketing, I believe video marketing, the type of video marketing that we teach is that perfection isn’t necessarily that important. What’s really important is just being authentic on camera. So just going out there and doing videos regardless. Don’t just go live and don’t have a point. Spend a little time.

Make sure that you’re still giving value to your target audience. My target audience is small business owners like most of you. I know that you guys suffer at times from the same type of thing where you’re really overwhelmed in your business, and you do that constant back and forth. Some of you will find value in this, so I made a couple of notes that I just referred to. It’s not perfect, but you know what? I did it, and people probably know a little bit more about me right now.

I’m looking forward to Angela coming back. She comes back tomorrow night, and then our live in person workshops are the following week, on the following Monday, so we’re just polishing that up. I know a lot of you guys. There’s a few of you guys that are coming to that. We’re really looking forward to it. We’re going to have, I think, 12 people. 12 people in the room, which is really exciting. And then the online program launched as well, and a lot of you are in that program. Those videos are being rolled out today. That’s one of the things that really has taken up a lot of time is getting those online training modules, those videos edited, and then uploaded onto that website.

That’s all … Hey, Yasmin. That’s all I wanted to share with you today. I think the biggest take away today is to one, just do it. Just be doing your video marketing. Be consistent. If you say you’re going to do it, do it at that time, and then don’t worry so much about perfection. Just get those videos out there.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. I know I didn’t do my little announcement I was going live, so I didn’t expect a lot of people to be live in the room, but I know a lot of you will watch the replays, because I look at my analytics, and I can see that people do watch those replays, and they do watch them to the end. Angela and I talk about that a lot. Just because you have one or two viewers in your live videos, if you boost those videos afterwards, you will get a lot of replays. All those target audience, people out there that find value in your stuff, they will watch those videos at another time, because people are busy. People are busy doing other things. Sometimes people have to watch the replays.

Anyway, I am going to sign off for today. I don’t know if anyone has got any questions in the room, but anything video marketing related, but I’ll stick around for another minute or two. Getting a thumbs up. That’s good. All right. I’m going to sign off, because I have tons of work to do. But you know what? I did my marketing today. I made it a priority, and it’s done. Now I’m going to get back to work and get the next marketing module on the online training website. If you are an online training member, you’re going to see that. I’m going to make a commitment. I’m going to get it done today, so it’s going to be online first thing tomorrow.

All right, everyone. Have a great day, and we’ll talk to you soon.

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